The Benghazi Attack was a pre-planned armed assault on a United States outpost in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, in which the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other members of his diplomatic mission were murdered:[1][2]Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and private security employees and former U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods. Ambassador Stevens was reported to have been brutally raped before his murder.[3] The attack also injured two other Americans.

The Obama administration initially said that the attack was provoked by an anti-islamic YouTube video, but the facts disproved that.

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Administration spin

With several U.S.embassies besieged on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declared authorities had no reason to believe the attack on the sovereign territory of the United States consulate in Benghazi less than two months before the 2012 Presidential election, resulting in the deaths of several Americans, was a terrorist attack.

“

The unrest that we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive,

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became the official White House line. President Obama went on the Comedy Channel to say the deaths of Americans was "not optimal".[4] When pressed by reporters, who pointed out evidence that the violence in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, Press Secretary Carney argued “the unrest around the region has been in response to this video.”

Susan Rice spins the story on network television

On September 16, 2012 Ambassador Susan Rice showed up on all five major Sunday morning talk shows to push the administration's spin linking the Benghazi murders and a satirical video. Rice told longtime Democratic partisan George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week, the attack was “a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo” – referring to a demonstration in which a mob breached the embassy compound wall and tore down an American flag. Rice repeated the false claims throughout her morning talk-show appearances on all networks.[5]

Administration supported jihadis responsible for attack

Around a week after the attack Obama finally ordered an investigation. The leading suspected jihadis in the murders and terrorist attack were the local Benghazi branch of Ansar al-Shariah, known to have ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).[6] A commander of the terrorist group boasted jovially over drinks with reporters for the New York Times in Benghazi[7] as President Obama's investigators failed to interview him.[8]

The attack is said to have been investigated by the State Department, but a more thorough enquiry was done by the Congress. A House committee hearing on September 10 revealed that Ambassador Stevens and others wished additional security for the consulate, but were turned down.